Marek

I'd be really happy if 2008 will be Clinton vs. McCain. That way you're guaranteed a reasonably sane person on either side.

Listen, guys. You don't need to stay where you are. Leave this sinking ship and come to Holland. We've got food, and blankets to keep you warm. I propose USAID: Assistance for America.

Then there is no hope. Kill Bill Bush. If he'd gone through his campaign saying things implying something else, he'd have lost without question. He really had to say a lot of things or else he'd be dead meat. Remember how they blew up the words "global test"? He had to watch out what he was saying. Kerry being all tough guy is the same to me as Bush saying he's a compassionate republican in 2000. I think everyone who said the two candidates were much alike were wrong, just like everyone was wrong about it in 2000. To give a concrete example, Kerry could have gone to Germany asking for troops and would have got them. (If it was up to the people, anyway. But Schröder would basically be in deep shit if he said no, as Kerry quickly rose to a sort of rockstar status in Germany.)

Hurray for another four years of oligarchic religious fanatics with imperialist ambitions running the most powerful country in the world. Did I say four years? Impeach the fucker. There's a million reasons to do so by now. So many things have happened that should have been scandals. I applaud those who voted Kerry, but I hope those who voted for Bush will realize their grave mistake. America, as a nation, has just lost my last sliver of respect. Europe should invade and liberate America while their troops are caught off guard in Iraq. California and New York will be thankful.

VPRO happen to be responsible for like 3/4 of all quality programming in the Netherlands. Man, they're so good, even when they're horrible. It's striking how much coverage of the US elections there is in Holland by the way. I do understand why, cause the US president is in a way the president of the world, but it seems like there's even more attention than usual. There's the VPRO America theme night, AmerikaKiest.nl, the special broadcasts of Nova on Saturday live from New York, a special program from Max Westerman, and so on. Are the NOS doing live coverage of the elections?

Heh. I just saw a Dutch-sounding name in your e-mail address and made a random guess. I'm glad the HKU is not the center of the universe. I was getting worried about that.

Jaero: just out of curiosity, do you study game design at the HKU by any chance?

But can we be guaranteed a result by the end of tomorrow?

Ummm, no. In case you've been living under a rock that shields you from receiving news, Osama has released a new tape in which he criticizes Bush and hints at new attacks. People now have that image fresh in mind, and it will help George.

Bush, courtesy of Osama. But I'm hoping Kerry. For the sake of us all.

Whoah, I never knew you could have your own house. I basically just entered a place in Balmora, killed its residents, threw out all their crap and used their shelf space for my important but heavy items. Since the world is persistent, you can safely leave stuff anywhere.

My mind can hardly fathom this level of brilliance. It's been a while since I've gotten goosebumps from a game trailer, especially one that is so poorly edited (but still fucking awesome) as the Wanda trailer. Wow. More here.

Uhhh, maybe because the joke makes no sense if you didn't buy the floppy version?

At least his dream is not as scary as the dreams that GreenJeanz had over at AG.

I have a cat who occasionally sits on my head. You can't really say that for dogs.

Oh man, we were planning to do a coloring contest at E3 2005. I think you saw a blurred vision of the future!

Why did you post this poll? Dogs can't look up. It's a fact.

Chris Morris' column is the best ever, and puts all the specialist press to shame. Do not mock it, my friends.

I like toothpaste, and jam.

(As in, they were actually cool and gave us some much-appreciated beers.)

Here's some pics from our E3 adventures. We wrote the press release one night at the hotel whilst eating pizza and randomly fucking around, so the writeup was just crammed with a zillion jokes, half of which didn't work due to poor editing. Anyway, this is how the press release got back from Warcry: And here's what Jake wrote back. The first bit refers to our business cards, which just read "http://www.idlethumbs.net" on the back and had the thumb logo on the front. Oh, by the way, the version of the press release that was actually sent out to the entire world by e-mail did not have the word "penis" in the headline. Just so you know.

There's a zillion and a half studios named after monkeys. And then there's all these games with monkey in their titles, like Super Monkey Ball, Monkey Island, SkullMonkeys, Pinky Monkey Town, Monkey Puncher and of course Burning Monkey Solitaire. Not to mention half the shareware games in the world that feature monkeys. I mean, come on. I don't think monkeys are actually that interesting and/or hilarious. What do you say?

I think exceptions can be made for Jojo the Monkey, and possibly Mr. Nelson from Pippi Longstocking. But no further.

From a press release issued yesterday: "Xbox®, the future generation video game system from Microsoft". A future generation? I thought it was the current generation. Though before Xbox was launched, it was the next generation. But if Microsoft says the current generation is the future generation, what should we call Xbox2? Argh!

I'm very interested in Oblivion. I liked Morrowind despite its flaws, and it seems the developers have got at least a couple of good ideas to make Oblivion better. However, I'm not crapping my pants over the graphics. They look good, but I think a lot of people are exaggerating how impressive they are. It's nice that leaves are probably rendered individually, and that the engine is capable of a creating a thoroughly bumpmapped and eerily lighted dungeon with super-shiney walls, but it's not blowing me away. I'm not saying it should, but a lot of previews are overreacting to the fact that it's for the next generation of consoles. Maybe it's the art direction. I've seen many forests but few of them had just one shade of green. In any case, I'm anticipating more information on the game itself.